Let me just say that my mention of “hospital” yesterday was just errant speculation due to the recent shuffling of artists. I, and I’m sure I speak for everyone else in the SoSF community, sincerely hope nothing bad has befallen Tom Batiuk; I have never, ever wished anything but good fortune to him personally. As I’ve mentioned from time to time, from all reports he’s a genuinely nice guy who enjoys meeting his fans; I hope he continues to be so, and do so, for many years to come.

That said…today’s episode is…well, I was going to say “beyond awful,” but I’ll go with “inexplicable” instead. There’s no joke, there’s no good drawing, no wit, just…nothing at all. It’s impossible to imagine a new reader coming across this strip and saying, “Hey, this is a comic strip I’m going to read from now on, with relish!” It’s very possible to imagine a long-time reader saying, “Okay, this is it, I’m out of here. From now on, it’s BC Classic for me.”

The only positive bit at all is the fact that Dinkle is there, and he’s completely silent. I bet he hates that. He’s not even drawn fully, he’s just a menace in a left corner.

It’s also another avenue for speculation. Ordinarily, it would be Dinkle saying all this stuff, while Becky gazed at him in full worship mode. (Heck, I think the last time we even saw Becky, she was a silent potato at Wally’s wedding.)

11 responses to “And when the door was opened, there was nothing standing there”

That’s how I look at every day’s strip, really. Odds are there is somebody somewhere reading it for the first time on any given day, and I think one of the writer’s main goals should be to get that first-time reader wanting to come back for more. I can’t remember the last Funky Winkerbean that I’d say came close to doing that.

“Huh huh huh! My fund-raising idea was stupid and unsuccessful so let’s make a wry gag out of it, because soon we’ll all be dead anyway!”. F*ck you, Becky and f*ck your band mattresses too. This would confuse and baffle the hell out of anyone unfamiliar with the band mattress arc, which is pretty much everyone.

This is hilarious. It reminds me of my recent report to my business partners. We were so very successful selling “Brady6” shirts in February that I barely had any to offer the board members during my March presentation.

He’s clearly fallen into the same trap Lynn Johnston did by taking a joke past the point of actually being funny. By piling on the absurdity, what was cute (taking home surplus band candy) becomes absurd and unfunny (taking home surplus band mattresses.)

So true. The “band mattress” thing might have been an acceptable (I didn’t say funny) one-off gag but it doesn’t merit being repeated dozens of times, over and over. And I genuinely hate the way Becky’s casual incompetence is supposed to be “wacky”, as that was Dinkle’s shtick, not hers. Why bother creating characters if you’re just going to give them recycled personalities?

An answer to the Ayers mystery from the March 29, 2017 FW site blog post:

“Chuck isn’t leaving Funky altogether. Apparently, you can take the artist out of Funky, but you can’t take Funky out of the artist. So Chuck and I will still be working on selected story arcs down the line.”

I remember reading that. And that’s probably the case that, like a guest host, his hour came round at last, so he had to slouch toward Westview to be bored.
It’s just very difficult for me to imagine someone saying, “Hey, you’re doing band awards? Oh, can I please draw that one? Please please please? I’ll be your best friend!”